Report from Engine Co. 82 (7 page)

“Asparagus with wine vinegar.”

Billy-o smiles his usual half-smile, and says, “Dennis pal, that’s an excellent suggestion.” He turns to Herbert, and says,
“Make it string beans, Jerry.”

“I knew I could help you, Billy-o,” I say.

There are eighteen firemen in the kitchen now. Engine 85 and Ladder 712 have returned from the fire they were working. It
was a small job, two rooms in a vacant building. A few men are playing gin at the corner table. Four guys from Engine 85 have
started a Scrabble game at the next one. Matt Tunney carefully makes the first word: “ANUS.” The other players laugh. I look
down at his rack and ask him why he didn’t use the other A to pick up an extra point. He says, “You mean sauna. I thought
of that, but nobody would’ve laughed.”

The bells start sounding again—Box 2508—Hoe Avenue and Aldus Street. Engine 85 and Ladder 712 are assigned there. I sip my
coffee easily as I watch the men hustle through the kitchen door. The room is quiet now, and I can understand what the news
reporter is saying on the TV. The phone rings. It’s an alarm for Ladder 31. Three more guys run to the kitchen door. Jim,
Vinny, and I watch the news.

One hundred and twenty people have been arrested at an anti-war rally. Jim says, “You know, the way I figure it, it’s just
that times have changed. I would have been madder than hell if they had protested the Korean War the way they do this one.
And we were fightin' for the same thing. Right? Most of these protesters are in college just to keep out of the Army, anyway.
And they talk about democracy and equality. If they took away the college deferment, and made the draft equal, then they would
have a reason to protest. But you never hear them yelling about that.”

The department telephone rings—three distinct rings in quick succession. We know from the signal that it won’t be a false
alarm. Someone has called the department, and they are relaying the information. Vinny chalks on the blackboard: “1284 Fox,
apt. 30.” The pumper is in the street in less than thirty seconds. It is only two blocks up Intervale Avenue to the address,
and on the way I suddenly remember hearing that Jim has a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, but I never heard him mention either
of them.

We can smell burning wood and plaster in the air. We all know that Ladder 31 and Ladder 712 are at other alarms, and it will
take a few minutes for another ladder company to get here.

As we turn the corner we see smoke coming from two windows on the third floor. Vinny says, “I’ll take the ax and a claw tool,”
then yells to Benny, “Take the hook and water can.” Benny nods as he puts on his gloves. Luckily, the fire is only on the
third floor. Jim, Carmine, and I can handle the hose work while Benny and Vinny do what a ladder company is supposed to.

The pumper stops in front of the building. Captain Alber-gray yells out, “Five lengths, inch-and-a-half,” and then runs into
the building. Benny and Vinny follow right behind. Jim takes the nozzle in his left hand, and puts his right hand through
three folds of inch-and-a-half hose, one fifty-foot length. I take a length as Jim steps down, and Carmine takes another length.
Carmine lays his folds on the ground, and pulls off two more lengths of hose. Jim yells to Bill, “Take off,” and the pumper
moves to the hydrant, the coupled hose dropping off behind it.

The stairs are crowded with excited people. We tell them to watch the hose as they go down. We reach the third floor with
two lengths to spare. Carmine flakes it out down a long hall. We pull our boots up to our thighs. Captain Albergray comes
out of the apartment, and the smoke billows out with him. “We met the lady who lives here on the way up,” he says. “She had
two kids with her and said the place was empty. Benny and Vinny are in there searchin' anyhow.”

Vinny comes out with mucus running from his nose. He wipes it off with his glove, and says, “Listen Jim, the fire is at the
end of a long hall. Make a left at the end, and it’s the first two rooms.”

We are all bending low now because the smoke is starting to bank down. Benny comes out of the apartment on all fours. He asks,
“Did a truck company get here yet?”

“No,” Captain Albergray says. “You better go up and get the roof.” As Benny leaves to ventilate the smoke and heat at the
top of the building we can hear the water running through the hose.

The fire has already broken the glass in the front two rooms. The heat will be able to escape, but Captain Albergray tells
Carmine to get a mask, just in case. We have to put the fire out fast, before it extends to the floor above. We are on our
hands and knees as we hump the hose forward. We keep our heads as close to the floor as possible. It is sooty as hell, and
the smoke has filled the hall. It’s tough pushing in, but we get to the end of the hall and see the vague red glow to the
left. The heat hits us full for the first time.

Captain Albergray’s walkie-talkie is blaring. The Chief has ordered Engine 94 to stretch a second line to the floor above,
but they won’t need it. We’re in now. The smoke is lifting and we are sitting on our heels. Jim keeps the nozzle moving in
a circular motion. The water is bouncing off the ceilings and walls, and hits us in the face as steam. Every ten seconds Jim
yells, “Gimme three more feet,” and we hump the hose in.

Ladder 31 is here now, and Allen Siebeck is in the room pulling at the ceiling with a six-foot hook. “Where the hell ya been,
Allen?” I yell to him.

“We stopped for dinner at Delmonico’s, you dumb ass. Where else would we go?” Allen would normally have a lot more to say,
but it’s his job to check for fire extension, and he ignores me.

“Just a few more feet and we got it,” Jim yells.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” Captain Albergray keeps saying.

Benny is back now, and he helps me with the hose. Jim makes the far room.

The fire is out now and Chief Niebrock is checking for extension, but the fire never got beyond these two rooms. Jim and I
go over to a window. The air tastes good. I look at Jim and at the mucus running over his mouth. He takes his glove off and
blows his nose into his hand. He coughs up a large glob of stuff from his diaphragm and spits it on the wall. It hits solidly—black
with occasional veins of gray.

Ladder 31 and Ladder 19 start tearing the walls and ceilings down. Everything in both rooms is burnt—a bedroom set, a couch,
a couple of stuffed chairs, a television console. A cop leads a woman into the room. She looks around and screams hysterically.
She didn’t have much, and now she has nothing. She collapses, and Benny helps the cop carry her into a neighbor’s apartment.

Before leaving, we give the rooms a heavy bath. Our underclothes are sticking to us, and the brisk breeze sweeping through
the ventilated apartment chills us. I think of those men on Charlotte Street, and wonder how people can drink beer on street
comers in weather like this.

The kitchen clock reads eight o’clock as I put fifteen cents in the soda machine. Matt Tunney looks up and says, “They took
Nick Riso to the hospital.”

“What happened?” Vinny Royce asks.

“We were coming back from Hoe and Aldus and some guy threw a brick and hit Nick in the chest. Not a half brick. A full fuckin'
brick. The pumper was going about twenty-five miles an hour, and if it would’ve hit him in the face, it would’ve killed him.”

“Is he hurt bad?” I ask.

“Well, they’re lettin' him outta the hospital, so it can’t be too bad.”

Matt looks up, and a smile appears on his face. Riso is standing at the door.

“How ya feel?” ask Matt and Vinny at the same time.

“A little weak,” Nick answers. “A lot of blood vessels in my chest are broke.” He opens his shirt and shows us the redness
on his chest. “If I didn’t have my rubber coat on, the impact would have knocked me right off the pumper. It absorbed the
impact, ya know. The Doctor says I need a lotta rest.”

The bells start sounding again—Box 2402—and the guys of Engine 85 and Ladder 712 hustle out of the door. Nick goes upstairs
to change clothes. He’ll be on sick leave for a few weeks. We call it “
R
&
R
(Rest and Recuperation).”

I follow Nick up the stairs. In my locker somewhere there is an old battered book of Yeats’s poems. I search through the pile
of dirty laundry, the paperback mysteries, the wom copies of
Playboy
and the
Saturday Review.
Ahh, there it is. The red cover is coming apart, and some pages have loosened, but it’s still complete. I remember reading
a poem where Yeats talked about wise men becoming tense with a kind of violence before they can accomplish fate, and I finger
the pages looking for it. It is this kind of violence I am feeling now, as Nick Riso slowly changes his clothes across from
me. What can be done with people who throw bricks at the very men who are most committed to protecting the lives of the brick
throwers? I feel empty and helpless, because I know that nothing can be done. And I feel violent, because I know that this
insanity will continue until the brick throwers are educated, until they find decent jobs, and until they have better places
to live in.

I come to “Under Ben Bulben,” and start to read, but three short rings of the telephone interrupt me. A voice from downstairs
yells, “82 and 31, get out.” Benny Carroll closes a fire protection manual, and runs to the pole hole. Nick says, “So long,
guys,” as I wrap my arms and legs around the top of the long brass pole.

As I slide the pole the bells come in—Box 4746—Prospect Avenue and Crotona Park East. It’s a job. The telephone alarm and
the location give me a feeling that well have a worker. It’s like a sixth sense.

It is 8:20
P.M.
As we turn up Prospect Avenue we can smell the smoke. There is only one smell like this: burning paint, plaster, and wood.
We can see the smoke banking down on the avenue before us, but we can’t see the fire yet. Ladder 31 is right behind us, so
we know we will get the ventilation we need.

As we turn the corner at Crotona Park we can see the fire. Flames are licking out of eight windows on the third and fourth
floors of a six-story tenement. There must have been a delayed alarm, and I imagine people alerting other people—alerting
everyone but the Fire Department. There is a crowd of people on the sidewalk. Some are in nightclothes. Some are barefoot.
Many are simply interested passersby. People are still rushing out of the building, crying, sobbing, or just sullen.

We have to take the heavy two-and-a-half-inch hose for a body of fire like this. Jim Stack takes the nozzle again, and the
first length, I take the second, and Carroll the third. Vinny and Carmine head for the mask compartment.
“Take off!”

People are screaming that there are people trapped on the fifth floor. They are angry and confused because we are not paying
any attention to them. They haven’t seen Ladder 31 go into the building. But we know if there is a rescue to be made, Ladder
31 will make it.

As we start to hump the hose into the building I notice that Jerry Herbert has already raised the aerial ladder to a fifth-floor
window. Richie Rittman and Billy-o are climbing up it.

The lights in the building have blown, and Captain Alber-gray guides us up the stairs with his portable lamp. He tells us
that Chief Niebrock has ordered a second alarm. We’ll need the extra help.

We reach the second floor and flake out the hose. We go to the top of the stairs at the third-floor landing. The whole front
half of the building is on fire. The flames are in the hallway and shooting up the stairs to the fourth floor.

We have to wait now for the water to come through the hose. It’s getting hotter, and Captain Albergray tells us to back halfway
down the stairs.

Jim turns to me and Benny, and says, “When we get water we’ll hit the hallway and then make a left into the first apartment.
It’s going to be a hard bend, so keep the hose low. I don’t know how far we’ll be able to go, but well try.”

Captain Albergray says, “All right Jim, but don’t push too fast. The goddam fire must be through the roof by now, so well
be here for hours anyway.”

We can hear the water gushing through the line. As it reaches the nozzle, Jim says, “Let’s go,” and he moves up the stairs
with us humping the hose behind. I can see Engine 45 moving up the stairs below us with another line. I tell them to move
in on the second apartment as soon as they get water, but my words are unnecessary. They’ll be there.

It is starting to get smoky now that the water is on the fire. The fire in the hallway goes out quickly. We are putting 250
gallons of water per minute on it. Jim makes the landing, and fights with the hose as he makes the bend. Captain Albergray
is next to him. “Beautiful. Easy now. Keep low. Beautiful,” he is saying. Carroll and I are behind pulling on the hose to
take the strain off Jim’s arms. The heat in the walls is radiating out, and my body is dripping and my clothes are saturated
with perspiration.

I put my mouth to the floor in an attempt to breathe cool air, and suddenly my throat hurts, like it does after a two-day
drunk and a thousand cigarettes. I must have taken in some super-heated air. I forgot about the second apartment. The fire
lapping out of it has lit up the hallway again.

“Hey Jim,” I shout, “you better turn the line, or else we’re going to get caught between it.”

Jim struggles to turn the line again, and he hits the fire in the hall. He moves a foot or so into the apartment.

Captain Albergray says, coolly, “The ceiling is down, Jim, and the floor upstairs is beginning to go. Watch it, ’cause it’ll
come down in pieces.”

“Well, let’s try to move in just a little more,” says Jim. “Then maybe I can hit that room on the left.” We push the line
in a few feet, and Jim yells, “Ahh, ahh, your mother’s ass.…” Part of the floor above has given way.

Jim is on his knees, and he wants desperately to get out of the apartment, but he knows better than to shut the nozzle down
in a fire like this. The water is our only protection. So I crawl up fast, and take the nozzle from Jim. Vinny and Carmine
are down on the floor now. Their masks will make it easier to fight this fire. Vinny takes the nozzle, and I back downstairs
to get a mask. Jim is already in the street breathing the clear air heavily. He has multiple burns on the ears, neck, and
shoulders. I put my arm around his waist, and say, “You did a beautiful job Jim—like always.”